Letter to the Editor: Smoking only makes things worse

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This is in response to your article on cigarette butts. Something not mentioned about cigarette butts is how much time and money is wasted by city and other maintenance workers picking up butts. I manage an apartment complex, and it sickens me being a non-smoker to have to pick up the butts of inconsiderate, depressed addicts.

I say this because people who care about their health are positive people. People know smoking is bad for them; however, they smoke because they’re stressed about their lives and believe that smoking helps them cope. In reality it only makes things worse. Besides health issues and medical bills, smoking is expensive and takes away money that could be spent on something good.

Also, it makes people stink. Most non-smokers are repulsed of a smoker near them not even smoking because their entire body and clothes are saturated in smoke stink. I believe tobacco is the most addictive substance on the planet. Smokers don’t care about themselves to break that chain, so why would they care about the environment?

If manufacturers of cigarettes aren’t going to help people stop smoking, they should at least do something about their most polluted item in the world.

A few ideas:

• Make packs of cigarettes with one space having a reusable filter, which would drastically reduce that litter percentage.

• Manufactures can make and sell fashionably designed reusable filters separately, still making them money.

• Make smokes without filters. I mean really, what is a light cigarette anyways? (These cigarettes will kill you slower!) Just make the smoke milder and cigarettes smaller.

• With technology these days, make a filter that’s biodegradable — let’s face it their current design literally sucks.

If manufactures and smokers don’t care and the rest of us do, something needs to be done because we all don’t need to suffer.